The Legend of Liver Eating Loud
by Flagg1991
Summary: Lincoln Loud tracks down the scoundrel who killed his family. Oneshot. Old West AU. Cover by Raganoxer.


**The Loud House fandom has some sick obsession with feminizing and emasculating men. Lincoln is often portrayed as weak, stammering, and ultra sensitive and Lemy is turned into a loser and a 'cuck' (that means he don't get no play). It goes back to canon. I mean, look at Lynn Sr. dorking around the house in a pink apron, Clyde being a geeky weirdo, Lincoln not being able to defend himself against even Lola (who is six - seriously, she kicks his ass). This is a huge pet peeve of mine mainly because I see** _ **so much**_ **of it. Recently, AberrantScript did a story where Lincoln crossdresses. I haven't read it yet (I will and I will enjoy it because AberrantScript is the best), but I saw it and said, "Enough." I thought of the manliest thing I could possibly have Lincoln do and wrote it. The result follows.**

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Lincoln Loud shifted the chewing tobacco to the right side of his mouth and spat onto the ground. His face, cast in shadow by the brim of his hat, was grizzled and crisscrossed with scars - some he got in bar fights from Deadwood to Tombstone, and others he earned on the battlefield - Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Antietam, and Gettysburg. His blue eyes were like icy flecks, and the stubble across his chin was so rough you could strike a match on it.

It was autumn in the Rocky Mountain foothills, and Lincoln had been on horseback for three weeks searching for the bastard who killed his wife and baby. When he found him, he was going to slit his belly open and eat his liver as a sign of contempt, a gesture he learned from a hermit called Liver-Eating Johnson: A Crow Indian killed Johnson's wife, and Johnson embarked on a long blood feud against the tribe, scalping close to three hundred of them and eating their livers. The Crow, you see, believe that the liver is vital to get into their version of Heaven. With Johnson, the only place they went was the latrine.

Lincoln didn't rightly know what he was gonna do after he avenged the deaths of Lola and their daughter Leia. Probably find more of the killer's like and give them the Johnson treatment. Or he might drink himself silly.

Or, most likely, he'd stick his Colt in his mouth and pull the trigger.

He'd decide once he got there.

Presently, he was astride his horse, General Lee, and making his way north toward the higher hills; stately pine trees dotted angled slopes, and in the distance, snow-capped peaks stood against misty skies. A cold, bracing wind blew from the west and rustled the fabric of his coat. General Lee, named after the manliest man Lincoln had ever had the pleasure of meeting, moved at a leisurely pace, his feet crushing stray bits of ice with crisp sounds.

Lincoln had had the horse for three years now - it belonged to Billy the Kid, but Lincoln took it after he killed him. The bounty he got was plenty, but Lincoln didn't like outlaws, and the thought of Billy shaking his fist at him from hell _(That there's_ my _horse_ ) made him grin.

Before moving to Colorado last year, Lincoln made it his mission to gun down as many criminals as he could. He started when he got out of the Confederate army, walking all the way to Texas from his native Mississippi because he didn't have a horse. A group of bandits ambushed him in Louisiana, and Lincoln killed all six of them with his bare hands. In Texas, he served as a deputy in a town called Arnette, and the level of murder, thievery, and immorality he saw convinced him that what the world needed was a good old fashioned cleansing. In his time, he'd killed over 200 cattle rustlers, gunslingers, rapists, and stagecoach robbers, many of them with his hands or his trusty Bowie knife, because a _real_ man gets up close and personal when he takes someone's life. It was only fair.

Plus...mayhap he liked seeing a man's eyes widen as he gazes past this life and sees the fires of hell waiting for him.

He gave that life up when he met Lola, the prettiest showgirl in all the west. He was taken by her beauty the first time he saw her - her eyes blue like clear mountain streams and her blonde hair like summer wheat. She bore herself like royalty and when her eyes fell upon a man, all they could do was scurry to win her favor. Some way, some how, Lincoln won the pot and married her. Then, when she was pregnant, they left the rough and tumble world of Texas outlaws behind to begin and raise their family.

Then, one day when Leia was six months old, he went into town for supplies, and when he came back…

A single tear welled in his eye but he blinked it back. Men don't cry. They get _even_.

A caw drew his attention to the milky white sky, where birds ducked and wheeled in a circle. Something was dead over there, and if Lincoln was a superstitious man, he'd take it as a bad omen, but he wasn't and he didn't. General Lee chuffed and Lincoln absently stroked his matted mane. "It's alright," he said in a voice made deep by years of smoking, drinking, and beating the tar out of the toughest men in the 38 states. The animal instantly calmed under his steadying touch and pressed on. A half mile later, they crested a hill, and a wide valley bisected by a rushing gray river spread out before them. In the distance, white smoke plumed from the chimney of a cabin, and a horse drew a carriage along a narrow dirt road winding around the base of a mountain. General Lee came to a halting stop, and Lincoln swept his gaze over the terrain, looking for any obvious signs of the scoundrel but not seeing any.

He pulled the reigns, and the horse turned to the left, moseying at an unhurried pace. Lincoln scanned the ground...then started when he saw an unmistakable print in the mud. He brought General Lee to a stop, swung one leg over, and jumped off. Kneeling, he poked the filth with one finger then brought it to the tip of his tongue. "Fresh," he said gruffly. "He came through here less than an hour ago." He glanced up and squinted into the distance: Mountains stood against the sky in jagged, vertical formation. He wouldn't have gone that direction; there weren't no way in _hell_ he'd be able to climb steep rock faces like those. He turned his head to the left; a grassy hill sloped away from his current position. Given the pace at which he suspected the monster to be moving and the difficulty of the terrain, he was probably just on the other side.

Spitting tobacco juice into the grass, he tasted the mud again just to be sure; this was a trick he learned in the Confederate army. When he first signed up to fight in 1861, he was an inexperienced farm boy from the Mississippi Delta who dreamed of adventure, but by the end of 1864 he was one of Robert E. Lee's finest trackers: He could sniff a blue belly scout from twenty miles and hit him with a minie ball from almost the same distance. It never hurt to check yourself, though, especially during an engagement as important as this one.

Hopping back on the horse, he yanked the reigns and dug his spurs into its soft flanks. It neighed, then started up the hill at a trot. Moments later, they reached the top, and Lincoln spotted him making his way across a plain, all brown and evil like. He sneered and spurred the horse on. Crying out, General Lee bounded down the hill, and at the bottom, Lincoln jumped off. All the rage, loathing, and misery he'd been feeling since he found his girls strewn across the cabin in pieces broke over him like a wave, and he began to tremble, a hot, furious blush spreading across his face and the back of his neck.

"Halloo, you sumbitch!" Lincoln cried and stalked after the wretch. He stopped and looked over his shoulder, a 950 pound male grizzly with a white streak along its brow. Recognition seemed to flicker in its eyes, and it turned to face Lincoln. "That's right, you goddamn bastard," Lincoln said, whipping off his hat and throwing it aside. "Didn't think you'd see _me_ again, did you?" He shrugged out of his jacket and let fall to the ground. The grizzly made a dangerous noise in the back of its throat and ambled forward, closing the distance between them. 100 feet, now 75, now 60. Lincoln unbuckled his gunbelt and tossed it away, his eyes hard and his lips turned down in a grimace of hatred. He pulled his shirt open, popping the buttons, balled it up, and tossed it over his shoulder. "You killed my girls now I'm gonna kill you." He pulled out his Bowie knife and tossed it from one hand to the other and back again as the bear stopped.

"What's 'a matter? You chickenshit? 'Fraid of goin' ta bear hell where you belong?"

The grizzly's face darkened.

Lincoln grinned maniacally. "You a big ol' bear and you scared of lil ol' me, ain't you? You're a yella belly coward. You supposed to be a man? You ain't no man. You ain't even a woman. You're a -"

The bear cut him off with a wild roar and shot forward, its legs pumping and its fur covered fat jiggling. Lincoln gripped the knife's handle as tight as he could, let out his own cry, and ran full tilt at his adversary.

When they met, the bear started to rear up on its hind legs, but Lincoln threw out his left forearm and brought the knife around in a deadly arc, the blade sinking into the soft meat of its throat. The bear issued a thunderous yell and swiped one gigantic paw across Lincoln's naked chest, its nails tearing his flesh in four jagged lines. Lincoln didn't even feel it: He yanked the knife out and stabbed it in the chest.

Standing tall, the bear lashed out and slapped Lincoln across the side of the head, hard, and the man fell to the ground. The grizzly started to come down on him, but he rolled away, narrowly missing its razor talons as they sank into the dirt. Shooting to his feet, Lincoln lunged at the dastardly creature and jumped onto its back, his arm hooking around its neck. It roared again and stood up; Lincoln held fast and threw his legs up, wrapping them around and digging his spurs in. He brought the knife up and then down, a jarring vibration shooting up his arm when the blade struck bone. The bear shook itself violently and Lincoln's gasp broke; he was flung aside like a rag doll and landed on his wrist with a snap. He was vaguely aware of hot pain snaking up his arm, but he ignored it and got back to his feet; blood seeped from the wounds on his chest and mixed with dirt and dust, producing a slimey mess. The bear ran forward, and when it was close, Lincoln ducked to the side and jumped on its back again, his forearm wrapping around its neck like before. The bear stopped and reared up as Lincoln, his teeth bared, jabbed it with the knife again and again.

Getting desperate, it threw itself back: Lincoln hit the ground and cried out as almost one thousand pounds of bear landed on top of him. He rammed the knife into its back and twisted: The blade snapped off.

Roaring, it rolled off of him and he got to his feet once more; he was panting, his eyes mad and his teeth clenched. The creature struggled to its paws; it was woozy and beginning to sway back and forth. Screaming, Lincoln ran at it, ducked, and slammed into its side with his shoulder. It cried out and toppled over, Lincoln mounting it and wrapping his hands around its throat. It swiped his arm and ripped his flesh, but he squeezed tighter, spitting flying from his lips as he spat a million and one oaths that each alone would make a balloon full of miners blush. The bear thrashed weakly beneath him, its struggle slackening as its life drained from its eyes. Lincoln locked his gaze with it and watched as its pupils dilated as if catching sight of what awaited it on the other side.

That wasn't enough, though; it would _never_ be enough. "You sumbitch," he growled. Releasing one hand, he balled it into a fist and brought it down square on the creature's snout: It burst like an overripe tomato, and Lincoln's hand shattered, not that he noticed, and not that he would care if he had. He did this again, and again, aiming for its mouth and knocking its murderous teeth literally down its throat.

He was shaking now, trembling with fury. He let go, slipped off, and dug his hands into the bear's furry flank, his rough, calloused fingers ripping into its gut and digging in its steaming bowels. When he found what he was looking for, he tore it from its mooring of blood vessels and tissue and dragged it out: A fat, red liver quivering and slick with blood.

Sneering in contempt, he brought it to his lips and tore into it with his teeth; hot, coppery bile filled his mouth and power surged through his veins. Tilting his head back, his mouth smeared with blood, he let loose a high, primal cry that echoed through the lonely hills for a long, long time.

In fact, they say that on quiet autumn afternoons, if you listen _real_ carefully, you can hear it to this day.


End file.
